Bound by Blood
by buffyvh
Summary: Scenes of the relationship between Lily and Petunia as they grew up.


**Disclaimer:** Harry potter, including all recognizable characters and plot lines does not belong to me. This fanfiction is purely for entertainment purposes.

**A/N:** This was something new for me when I wrote it, and was written before the release of Deathly Hallows.

----

A man stood in a doorway of his home, a smile on his face, watching the peaceful scene in front of him. Two girls dressed in matching dresses with a pattern of large, pale pink flowers on a white background sat wearing white hats with large brims at the tiny table in front of him. They sat across from each other, the seat on either side of them occupied by a rather large dark brown teddy bear, and a doll with jet black hair and red lips. One girl held a blue plastic tea pot and was pouring a light brown liquid into miniature, plastic "china" cups. The other, with blond hair shorn to ear length, was brushing off the green velvety dress of the doll.

"There!" Petunia set the doll down once again, taking care to balance the feet on the chair, leaning the head against the backboard. The little black shoes on the doll's tiny feet clicked against the chair.

"We all have tea now!" Lily set the tiny tea pot down in front of her, between her own plate and a plate of sandwiches and reached for her teacup. Petunia picked her own up, her pinky stiffly facing outwards. Lily, imitating her move tapped their cups together. "Cheers!" Lily shouted, her voice reverberating through the quiet yard, past their father and into the house.

"This is for our table!" Petunia declared. Lily looked up, and held out her hand to inspect the bunch of flowers that Petunia offered, tilting her head forward the take in the scent. They smelled sweet, not in a sugary way, but in a way that Lily would always associate with home. Lily carefully placed the bright yellow flowers in the middle of the table.

"Now it's perfect."

----

It was a balmy night, the continuation of a surprisingly warm day that had broken through the melancholy of late winter. There was the sound of chirping crickets, loud through the window that hung ajar in the hope of catching a slight breeze. Through the window in the bedroom a pair of eyes peeked out from in the mess of blankets on the bed to see if the door was closed and the yellow bar of light had disappeared from under the door. "I think mom and dad went to sleep Petunia." They giggled under the blue coverlet, lying facing each other, their facial features barely discernible in the silvery moonlight streaming through the window pane. They both smiled and hooked their pinkies together. "We have to be best friends forever, Petunia. Okay?" Lily ordered, her voice in a half-whisper and she squeezed her sister's pinky with her own, green eyes twinkling as they met the flecked hazel ones across from her own.

"Okay! We have to promise that it'll be forever!" Petunia said, her voice rising slightly in excitement as she moved her arm in an up and down motion, almost as if she was shaking someone's hand. A few strands of her blonde hair had come loose from her ponytail and hung limply over her cheek, damp with sweat. She was smiling widely, a bit of her smile flat against the white sheets of the bed.

"Yeah! We'll be best friends forever and ever and ever." Lily nodded vigorously, the blankets and sheets moving with and against her small frame as her body moved up and down in unison with her moving head. Her hair was longer than Petunia's, and a few hairs, the ends wispy, tickled her back.

"And when we grow up we'll live next door to each other and have matching houses, and gardens just for tea parties!" Speaking so quickly that the last few words were jumbled, Petunia paused, out of breath. Planning the future was one of her favorite things to do late at night, there were limitless possibilities.

Grinning in reply, Lily pushed her thumb against Petunia's, as Petunia pushed back. It was their pinky promise, and Petunia and Lily were convinced at that moment that it would last forever. Lily, Petunia. Petunia, Lily. That was one thing that would never change. They were sisters and best friends after all. Their future was all planned out. Together.

They fell asleep in that position, their pinkies intertwined until Petunia rolled away an hour later. In the morning, they ran down to breakfast, their pact, for the time being, forgotten.

----

Everyone around her seemed to know one another somehow, but she only saw a few faces she recognized, mostly relatives much older than her that she hadn't seen in years. But that didn't really matter; she just wanted the ceremony to be over so she could leave as quickly as possible and pretend that none of this existed. At ten years old Petunia was tall, gangly, and was often described by the boys in her class as a toothpick. A thin one. She sat near the bushes at the side of the lawn and watched relatives fawning over Lily. Lily was noticeably shorter than Petunia, but her long, red hair teased into curls that framed a pair of bright green eyes that seemed to laugh on their own were not common traits in the Evans family. Not to mention the cute spatter of freckles on the top of her nose.

Petunia felt the resentment welling up in her chest, it wasn't fair, she was the one who had just received an award in English. Not Lily! Looking around for her parents she shifted, moving her legs so they were beneath her as she smoothed her hair with her hand. She wanted to go home, right now, home where everything was always the same. Home, where her parents didn't care that Lily had red hair and green eyes, and Petunia only had blonde with mousy brown streaks and hazel eyes with more brown than green.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Lily freed herself from the latest aunt and ran over, her small white shoes bending the grass, running toward Petunia and finally falling dramatically, head first into Petunia's lap.

"Petunia save me from the weird relatives!" Lily begged, a faint giggle rising in her throat could be heard in her voice that was muffled by the skirt of Petunia's dress. Lily buried her face deeper into Petunia's lap. All thoughts of Petunia's ceased, as she pulled Lily up and hugged her. Petunia could smell spring flowers in Lily's curls, they tickled her nose.

"Let's go get some ice cream Lily. We can hide somewhere and eat it." Lily beamed at Petunia. Getting up she offered her hand and Petunia slipped her's into Lily's, and they half walked, half skipped to the long, rectangular refreshment table on the other side of the yard.

Even though she was only a few years older, it was Petunia's job to take care of Lily, no matter what.

----

Lily was eating breakfast that summer at the kitchen table with Petunia and their parents, swinging her legs back and forth as she chewed. It was early July, school was over for the year and Lily had celebrated her eleventh birthday just a few weeks ago. The weather was the only thing that wasn't behaving, the air was so thick with moisture Lily could taste it when she breathed. It was making out to be a lazy summer; the kind spent eating large quantities of watermelon and staying in the shade offered by the large, leafy trees in their yard.

Slowly stirring her toast in the pool of jam on her plate she didn't notice her father get up from the table to retrieve the mail from the slot. She looked up when he placed an envelope in front of her on the table, confused. She had never received mail in her life, aside from the occasional birthday card from relatives who lived far away. Once, one of her friends had sent her a postcard when the girl had gone to Belgium.

Lily picked it up, expecting very late birthday wishes, but was mystified by the handwriting spelling out her name. When she ripped open the envelope a letter fell out, and she picked it up, scanning through it quickly. For a moment, she couldn't believe it. Hogwarts? Magic? She had always believed such things existed. She had never dared to hope they would exist for her. Was this some kind of prank? But…somewhere inside of her, for some reason she probably couldn't explain, she knew it wasn't. She knew it was real.

Hesitating, she looked up at her parents. Her dad was reading the paper and eating at the same time, her mother was going through the mail. She leaned to the side of the table, catching the end of her dad's sleeve and tugging. He looked up with a fork hanging lopsided from his mouth, his eyes questioning. She handed him the letter.

----

They drove her to the train station; Lily sat in the back, her fingers laced together and her hands pressed into her lap. She watched the familiar scenery flash by, but everything felt new to her. Like they all held some kind of secret. She could barely contain her excitement. She was going to go to Hogwarts. She was going to learn magic. She was gong to get to meet new people, to see new sights. Her parents sat in front of her, her mother looking back occasionally to smile at her daughters, her father doing it through the review mirror. Petunia sat quietly staring out the window; she hadn't glanced at Lily for more than a few moments during the entire trip.

Ever since Lily had received her letter Petunia had become increasingly more withdrawn, more silent. Usually the summer months were filled with laughter, swimming and exploring, seeing friends from school. This summer had been spent helping Lily get ready for school but even when there wasn't shopping or something else to be done Petunia had chosen to spend more time with other friends from school.

Petunia had tried to talk to Lily. She had asked why Lily wanted to go for the whole year. Why Lily didn't want to stay, what Hogwarts offered that they didn't. Why Lily was leaving her family, and everything else she knew and loved for something so far away, so foreign. Something, that she was more than willing to repeat, might not even be real.

Lily went anyway. She listened to Petunia, she knew Petunia loved her. She felt guilty for leaving Petunia alone. But there was something pulling her, something that was telling her this was her calling. What she had been waiting for, something she would never be complete without. Lily tried to explain.

She didn't do a very good job of it. She didn't know how to show Petunia that she needed this. So she left with her dad who was pushing the trolley, turning to wave at Petunia before the car was out of sight.

Petunia gave in, and jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind her and running towards Lily. She hugged her, and told Lily to promise to write, to promise to come back during breaks, to promise to always be her little sister.

And of course Lily said yes.

----

Lily did come back that Christmas, and that summer, and every break after that. But Petunia could see more than anyone else that Lily had changed. Her sweet, sometimes shy sister had turned into a headstrong girl who was ready to fight for what she wanted.

And she could perform magic.

The summer Lily turned 17 she preformed magic for the first time for Petunia and their parents, turning a large, white rat into a china tea cup. Their parents couldn't stop talking for days.

Petunia never quite got the same effect with her schoolwork, or anything else she did. She gave up trying to impress her parents; the most elementary spells received more praise than anything she could ever accomplish. So Petunia retreated into the solitary quietness of her room and listened through the door as Lily told her parents all about her new life, with magic, with new friends, with a magical castle, with magical creatures.

Without Petunia.

She felt as if everything she, Petunia, had ever done was worthless. Nothing. And that September was the first time Petunia didn't go with their parents to drop off Lily at the train station. The first time she didn't say goodbye.

Petunia was sure Lily never noticed.

----

After that, Petunia never answered the phone calls; she never opened the letters written on parchment that appeared on her doorstep devoid of stamps. She ignored the owls, the messages, the packages. She wasn't ready to let Lily back into her world, to share everything she had with her sister, who already had it all.

Yet, when the letters stopped, Petunia became worried. She fretted, but pretended not to notice. She heard from her parents that Lily had gotten married, and she wondered if that was the cause. Her own husband, Vernon, never spoke about Lily, in fact they had never met, and Petunia liked it that way.

Petunia heard the whispers of the discontent; she herself saw the signs on the streets that all was not well. There was a increase in crime, in murders especially, and Petunia was afraid. She forgot about Lily, Petunia herself had seen the small wonders a teenage witch had preformed, Lily was safe.

Lily had magic. Nothing could touch her.

Touch her world.

So Petunia looked after her own.

----

One morning Petunia awoke early, stretching the kinks out of her joints and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. The sun was just coming up, painting the sky orange and banishing the thin clouds as it brightened the sky to a brilliant, light blue. She went quickly down the stairs, careful not to wake her son who was sleeping peacefully in his own room. He was just a baby, and the joy of her life.

She screamed when she saw the bundle next to the milk, and she knew what it was before she saw the small hand clutching the letter. Somehow she knew what the letter said before she opened it, and who it was from.

She took the boy in. She excused her actions to Vernon as obligation; she tried to tell herself that she was doing it because he was family, not because she owed anything to Lily. She tried to ignore him at the same time, his eyes. When she looked into his eyes, it was like looking into Lily's.

She denied that what she felt at those moments were hurt.

But she never let anything get too far. He had her sister's eyes after all.


End file.
